A Fair Trade, My Love
by Charlemaine
Summary: An immortal blooddrinker deals with a famous Fallen angel to retrieve his beloved from the dead, and unwittingly serves himself up as payment.
1. An Impossible Request

**1: An Impossible Request**

Armand was praying.

The dying evening light peered in slivers through the rose window above the life-size crucifix, casting a painful beauty on the emaciated features of the dying Jesus. Every architectural detail of the lofty ceiling with its delicate curved beams was thrown into soft arresting detail. Armand took no notice of this. His auburn head of curls was bowed like a child saying grace at the dinner table, perfect marble features "like a Botticelli angel" so composed and serenely implacable, one would never guess at the turmoil that raged beneath the perfectly tailored velvet suit.

Marius was dead.

He was dead at the hands of the renegade vampires who both respected and loathed him, but whose loathing won out after all, enough to make a bonfire of his castle and reduce the heritage and treasures of the mortal world that Marius had built so lovingly around himself – a world he and Armand had traversed together for a brief tender time – to anonymous cinders. Ashes to ashes, indeed.

Why he had been defeated in the first place bewildered Armand. One of the most powerful walking vampires, indestructible, zapping to dust anyone who would wilfully try and harm him from a distance with a mere stare. No, this was implausible. It sounded almost as if he had welcomed it. Tired of living, perhaps. Tired of being. He who had found so much beauty in the human race had decided finally to find out if there was an afterlife for those like them.

Armand was not angry. He was beyond anger. His nine-hundred-year-old heart was in an oblivion of horror and loss and wrath and mourning. The cherub and the god (as a mortal woman had called them once) had not been united for almost two centuries now; but that did not matter. A bond forged was a bond eternal. Such was the epic passion of immortal creatures who had only each other, finally.

God would not hear him now. He had not talked to God since Lestat had come back from Purgatory with one eye missing and crying the Devil's name, and claiming, wonder of wonders, to have talked to the Lord – _personally_ talked to him. How like Lestat to be granted such privileges and take them for nothing, a passing experience. But God was in His mighty and immovable Heaven now. All the crying and ranting and pleading from an ancient bloodsucker with the face of an eighteen-year-old boy-child would not push the cosmos of that Holy Realm to move in his favour. No, the chessboard of Heaven was set, and the chessboard had meant for Marius the Great to die. Yet Armand would move that chessboard, would topple the great pieces with all his might if he could. In his mind there was no compromise: he would have Marius back, or he would die trying

There was one other alternative.

God's own favourite angel. His other half. The Beautiful One, whose light had once shone so brilliantly he was named the Morning Star. He alone had the authority to, if not move those chess pieces, then at least nudge them in a slightly different direction. He was also more accessible than other 'legal' deities. And he just might grant this request.

It was a shot in the dark, and an obviously desperate one, but he was past maintaining a semblance of mourning dignity.

"My, but Lestat was right," said a soft deep voice echoing through the long aisle behind him. "You truly _are_ glorious to look at."

Armand rose and turned to gaze up at the tall, almost regal figure with the long mane of dark waves and golden skin. He was dressed in a simple deep red robe that nonetheless was immensely fine, woven from heavy silk and made specifically for a magnificent body such as his.

"You _did_ come," said Armand, surprised despite himself.

Lucifer, or Memnoch the Devil as Lestat knew him, smiled. "I never miss an appointment."


	2. Sacrifice

**2: Sacrifice**

"So you wish me to reclaim your Marius from the depths of…wherever he is." Lucifer waved a long-fingered hand at some vague metaphorical location.

Armand was surprised for the second time in a minute. "You do not know?"

"I certainly did not receive him. In fact we receive fewer vampires, demons and all-round hell-raisers than people would believe. Marius was not one of them." Lucifer sat and stretched out cat-like on a pew bench, his long legs peeking from beneath the open robe. He was naked underneath.

"So you can do nothing for me."

"I can do nothing for _you;_ but for _him,_ yes. There are ways of finding out."

Armand nodded. He did not press for more information; the Prince of Darkness could be counted on to keep his promises, that much he had heard. Instead he asked: "Why here? Why in the House of the One who cast you out?"

"Oh, we keep contact fairly regularly, all the time in fact. It's necessary for the business, you know. Souls and all that."

"Deciding who goes where, you mean?"

"More like controlling the traffic flow. No one _really_ decides where to go save the souls themselves. Even He cannot forgive you unless you forgive yourself. While you try to untangle your unresolved guilt issues, I offer a place to stay." Lucifer shrugged, an easy majestic roll of the shoulders that was nothing like an ordinary shrug. "The other option, of course, is to wander about like a lost puppy – sometimes material enough to be seen, at other times no more than a strain of particles desperately trying to keep itself together, afraid of not remembering. What humans call ghosts. I'm sure you have seen them."

"Plenty, yes. The next time I'll be sure to recommend them to you. Don't have a name card, do you?"

"What's the point? They can hardly get a grip of anything – literally." He moved forward suddenly and grabbed Armand's mass of dark red curls, sniffing it deeply. "You, on the other hand, are neither human nor ghost, and completely…hmm…_tangible._"

The rough, almost sexual gesture left the vampire breathless. "Name your price. The price for finding Marius, and bringing him back."

"I already have it."

Armand's heart was pounding out of its chest. "Oh."

There was a rush of air about his face, and he saw the gleaming obsidian wings unfurling, huge unearthly things that reached to the ceiling. Then he was being lifted, he was being airborne, and he had a glimpse of what it was like to be the victim instead of the reaper – helpless, entranced, weightless.

"I am _so_ going to fuck you," whispered Lucifer's serpentine tongue in his ear.

Armand melted into the terrible embrace.

"_I can't wait."_


	3. Sacrilege

**3: Sacrilege**

The fallen angel flew him up above the altar, to the point where he could taste the drops of painted blood on Jesus' crown of thorns if he extended his tongue. "This isn't going to have any consequence on my fate should I decide to die, will it, cavorting with the Devil?" asked Armand.

"Like you care."

"You're right, I don't. I just…" The vampire gasped as one sharp fingernail made a slit in his rayon-silk shirt, exposing one nipple to the draughty air. "I just assumed there would be some sort of drastic consequence to making love with the Ruler of Hell."

"What were you expecting – that you'd become my favourite harlot?" Lucifer smiled almost tenderly, stroking the vampire all over with his lips, his tongue. "Then again, you just might."

"Hmmm. A privilege even the Brat Prince Lestat cannot claim, eh?"

"Never. You are exquisite." Lucifer spread Armand's arms forcefully over the cross, aligning him with the suspended statue of the Christ. Golden ropes shot out of his hands and bound Armand's slim wrists to the ends of the wooden beam. Another long rope wound in an X across the vampire's chest, pinning him securely to the crucifix. The ribs protruding from the martyr's body jabbed into his back.

Armand was in a sort of uncomfortable ecstasy, the restraints a little too tight to allow him to breathe properly. "Of all the games Marius played with me, he left this one out," he gasped.

"Oh, I like your insolence, that defiant look on your angel-face. Makes the whole process so much more fun." The Prince of Darkness smiled. "Mind if I show you my favourite trick? It goes like this – " He formed his exquisite lips into an 'O' and _blew_ on the velvet suit, the expensive shirt, the boots, everything; and they crumbled away like so much dust, leaving Armand completely naked. The absence of clothing also confirmed Lucifer's suspicion that the boy's organ _was_ hard and ready, even as he turned his face away in pleasurable shame, cream-coloured cheeks flushed like ripening apples. Yes, pleasure and shame, the two contrasting elements that so governed the human's desire for physical intimacy.

Well, they were neither human nor divine, and at least one of them felt no shame at all.

"You will enjoy this," the Devil whispered, and drove his tongue into Armand's mouth, raping the crevice as he was going to rape the other one shortly. The scaled surface hurt a little, but not enough to stop Armand from moaning, _more, more._ His face, his silken hair, was crushed in the angel's grip; he felt nothing, he was a mass of excited organs and rushing blood. Nothing he did would stop this rampant assault now. The sharp incisors cut into Armand's tongue and squeezed out a rivulet of blood that trickled out from the corner of his mouth. The thorns adorning Jesus' head pressed into his scalp and punctured it. Were he not immortal and invincible to small wounds, this whole thing would have been rather dangerous.

Now the fiery tongue that had spoke sweet words in his ear trailed all over, leaving no territory unexplored. Lucifer's fangs grew delicately pointed and curved in imitation of a bloodsucker's, and he suckled Armand's flushed and erect nipple, drawing thread after thread of blood. The bound vampire wanted to cry out from the painful sweetness, but his lips, his tongue was bruised from the brutal kiss. He could only whimper – small, husky, mewling sounds like a starved kitten. It excited him terribly so that he begged and begged for release, forced him into a vortex of all-consuming rapture that he wanted no part of, and yet, did. Come spilled from his swollen member; he was surprised to feel the warm wetness. He thought it had dried up with his mortality almost a millennium ago – but here it was, dead impotent fluid of course, but coursing down his thighs nonetheless.

"Ah, the magic fountain," Lucifer teased wickedly and lowered his devouring mouth to drink of it. Armand was almost afraid he would bite the appendage clean off; but no, now he was ever so gentle, as gentle as a newborn lamb sucking its mother's milk – slowly, so slowly, excruciatingly.

"Don't – don't, please, please," begged the cherub-faced vampire. "Don't do this to me. This is cruel. I cannot take anymore – Ahh – " A new gush of semen poured forth, as if the Devil had slashed open a fragile wound. "My God, do you mean to make me come until I am dry and dead! If you must have me then take me now. Are you really so heartless as to prolong the torture!"

With wet salty lips Lucifer kissed him. "Shut up," he said roughly, tenderly. "Here, you have the chance to torment me the same – do it!" And he slid his hardened cock into Armand's panting mouth. The latter struggled, _no, I don't want this,_ but his sounds of protest were stifled by the enormous member and the hot salty-sweet nectar pouring down his throat. He had no choice but to take it. All choice had been stripped from him from the moment he had set foot in here. He was a prisoner robbed of every shred of dignity. Oh, this was degrading and terrible delicious at the same time, he couldn't decide which –

And then it came to an abrupt halt.

"Lucifer, stop it!" a voice like angry silver bells commanded. "This is sacrilege!"

It was the Archangel Michael.


End file.
